On Saturday, January 12, 2013 4:22:30 AM UTC-5, Harold & Susan Vordos wrote:
Hey guys!

We live in an area with little television reception. I've avoided paying

for a dish, as I don't watch all that much TV. We get a PBS station, along

with one of the Fox network stations. Good enough for us, as we get news and

some interesting scientific shows.



Ok, now my question. I have a splitter in a room that is not heated. As

weather turned colder, I started getting a lot of blue screen on the TV.

The colder it got, the worse the reception, until it got to the point where

the TV was off more than it was on. About a week ago, I lit the boiler

in the room where the splitter resides. Suddenly, great reception. When

the room cooled off, after turning off the boiler, it was back to blue

screen once again. Heated the splitter and got service back. When it

cooled down, it was, once again, lost. Replaced the old splitter with a

new one, which improved reception, but did not eliminate the problem.

Finally hung a small light bulb near the splitter, which I figured would

keep it warm. Sure enough, we now have great (albeit limited) reception

once again.



Anyone care to offer a reason for poor performance when a splitter cools off

too much? I would suggest that it was in the 40 degree range, not

freezing. Why would it cooling off make a difference? I fully expected

that it wouldn't be temperature sensitive.



Harold

That could very well be water condensation, and I suspect that it's in one of the cables, since replacing the splitter didn't fix it. If you have a cable coming in from outside, it's not at all uncommon for it to get filled with water.